The fact I could make a PC for about £300 less than dells top model by choosing the parts my self. This made me very interested so I went into my local Tesco and looked around at the computer mags on offer and cpc seemed to be the best one and it just started from there. Started 3 years ago when I was 15.
Red Alert 2 on a friend's computer, I bought my own copy and became irrevocably hooked. That said, back when I was about 7 or 8 we had Lego Racers on our first PC, then Lego Stunt Rally and then Lego Island 2 which inspired a RAM upgrade which was my first taste of performance enhancements with PCs. I then got my own decent PC which I could play CSS on at the request of my friends and then the damage was worsened.
At school I was not exactly Mr. Popular - only a few good friends. One of whom got a pc (486) for christmas. I used to come over and we would play Warcraft 1. After that bug bit, I begged my folks to get me a pc - which they did with a copy of C&C 1! Been gaming ever since PS: still have that copy of C&C
Parents bought the family computer (yes, back then most people could only afford one computer for the family) when I was 7. I bought a 500 demo CD from PC World that had Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, shareware on it. Was really downhill from there!
Awesome stories guys/girls! I was first hooked in primary school grade 5 when I had a project on briefly explain how a computer works and I was given a computer to take apart ever since that I have been fascinated and I love tinkering with my computer I find myself opening my computer every week or so to move a few stray wired out of the way just to make it look that little bit better I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my computer.
Got my first computer when I was 8 a good old amega 1200 got it with the game zool. then built my first system when I was 16 and thought this is great and been building and tweeking ever since.
Always been interested in them, even as far back as 1987-ish when I was six when my dad brought one home - green screen and everything! Then we got a Compaq Pentium 90 with Windows 3.1 - was such an amazing bit of kit (for 1993 or there abouts)I was totally hooked and games and upgrades quickly ensued.
Got into it at age 12 (1992) or so. Saved up a butt ton of money and bought a neighbors old 8088 desktop. I got it home and it booted to a command prompt. I had no idea what to do from there so I started looking for everything I could learn and asked a ton of questions. At 16 I was working part time for a local ISP for some side cash and a connection to the Internet. It's all been down hill from there. I still cannot get enough!
My father bought an AST 286 machine (11mhz cpu, 640KB RAM ) through his workplace back when I was about two years old (1990). He quickly introduced me to MS DOS and QBasic (Gorilla.bas Cheesecake!) as soon as I could read and two of his friends regularly gave us 3.25" floppies with shareware games on them from mags like PCFormat and PCZone over the years. Started out with the likes of Duke Nukem, Wolf 3D, Catacombs, Commander Keen, etc. - Back in the days when Apogee, iD and Softdisk publishing ruled the roost when it came to PC gaming. I played games on that 286 computer religiously for years but due to the hardware I couldn't play the games I really wanted like Doom and Quake until we got a new P200MMX system with Windows 95 in 1997; and that was when my fate was assured. The 286 was opened up and taken apart a few times to sate my curiosity once I felt brave enough with a screwdriver, but in the end it was consigned to an old factory at my father's workplace and later scrapped. In 1999 we got a P4 Dell and I cut my teeth on hardware by upgrading the RAM and GPU in that thing, but that was the last pre-built desktop computer that came into our house. After that I started building my own. These days I'm designing software and computer-based systems for music production as part of my PhD research, as well as teaching undergrad students about music technology; so I don't think my childhood years of PC gaming were a waste in any shape or form. It made me who I am today.
Started on a TRS-80 in elementary school, then an ADAM, then we got them built by our uncle for a while. By the time I was 16 I was employed by the school, and the rest is history.
I use the ads in the back of adult mags because the police have my numberplate on their system from a previous street crawling incident. Edit Woops.
we had an Atari ST in the house that i played xenon, monkey island, afterburner and a few others on. then we got a 486 eventually which i played wolfenstein, doom, civilization, duke nukem etc etc. Then i had a stint on consoles for a while. it wasnt until I was living with some friends in around 2006 who were playing cod 2 that i realised i needed a pc. Started reading bit-tech and realised all the cool kids were building their own pc's, everyone i told i was building a pc was like :0 what? they'd never even heard of anyone doing it, but i came away with an athlon 3500+ (which in retrospect was a mistake, should have gone for the x2's), 2GB ram and a 7900GT. when this system conked out due to a dodgy mobo i went for a Core2 setup with an 8800GT, which was a massive step up in speed. i think this was the point that i was really hooked on upgrading. i did numerous cooling mods and ugrades and by the time this system was finished it had a Q6600, 4GB and a GTX280. the system you see in my sig is supposed to last me 3 years, lets hope i get there without assaulting the wallet again
Started with a ZX81, almost 30 years ago. I transplanted the board into a Fuller mechanical keyboard/chassis, and that set the tone for just about every computer I've had since.
I played Hi-Octane on a friend's computer, borrowed it and Quake from him. They ran on my mum's horrible beige workhorse. My brother pirated UT99 for me for our next computer. The rest is history While we're on the topic of nostalgia, my first printer was one of those Strongbad-style perforated-edge grey-and-white things. It made noises like two robots having angry sex.
